


good is better than perfect

by TheJGatsby



Series: potentially lovely perpetually human [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 00:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5765497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know you wouldn’t kill me,” he says, stronger, still searching her impassive face. “What I’m wondering is why you saved me.”<br/>(Or, Rey finds Kylo Ren half-dead in a cave on Tatooine, and she's still trying to figure out why she saved his life.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	good is better than perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically before ‘one more time with feeling’ (let's imagine there's a time gap between them of indeterminate but significant size so I can write more timestamps in this universe).  
> Might be bullshitting lightsaber construction a little bit? If anyone knows better than me please drop me a line but wookieepedia and google didn’t tell me anything about the process of meditation in lightsaber construction SO.  
> Title from Man of a Thousand Faces by Regina Spektor because I’ve decided she’s my theme for this au

Rey finds Kylo Ren in a cave on Tatooine, of all places. She was sent there with all her lightsaber materials to meditate over them on Tatooine, as Luke had when he’d been training, and from the moment she’d landed something hadn’t felt right, so she started wandering further and further afield in her sand speeder until she stumbles across him, injured and dehydrated and barely alive. And, stars above, it would be so  _ easy _ right then, to just end it all, take out the blaster she has strapped to her belt and finish him off or even just… leave him there, to an unglamorous fate of dehydration in a goddamn cave on an awful no-account outer rim desert rock.

But then there’s a part of her, also, that would feel deeply wrong if she murdered him like that- he’s not even conscious, it’s not a fair fight. It’s not a fight at all, just cold-blooded. And as for leaving him there- the Jedi are supposed to be protectors, right? So she takes him carefully and settles him behind her on her sand speeder and makes it back to Obi Wan’s hut in the canyon. She gives him water and patches him up and tries not to be worried by how the initial scream of “danger!” in the back of her mind upon seeing his face seems to have been replaced by… concern. Pity. Honestly, she’s not sure why she’s saving him. Maybe because she wants to prove to herself that she really is better than him, or maybe because he’s just so pathetic, or maybe because she wants to know what the hell he’s doing alone on Tatooine, but whatever the reason, she stays up all night trying to bring him back from the brink.

It takes a couple of hours for his fever to break, and for him to fall peacefully asleep, but there’s something incredibly vulnerable about him when he does. It’s hard to reconcile the young-looking, serene countenance with the raw, violent emotion she’s known, even with the livid scar running up his face. With him stable for the night, she sits in the corner with the blaster in her lap and falls asleep.

When she opens her eyes to Tatooine’s first, milder dawn, Ren’s already awake and staring at her, dark and steady and scrutinizing as if she’s a puzzle he’s trying to solve.

“I’m still alive,” he says, raspy and suspicious. She rises and stretches and retrieves a bottle of water from the table, her blaster never leaving her hand.

“Believe it or not some of us think it’s  _ wrong _ to kill people in cold blood,” she replies simply, pouring some water into his mouth.

“I know you wouldn’t kill me,” he says, stronger, still searching her impassive face. “What I’m wondering is why you saved me.” She shrugs and moves away to start gathering her lightsaber materials. She’s wondering that too, but she won’t tell him that. 

“You probably shouldn’t get up or move or anything, at least for today. You were pretty beat up when I found you.”

“I hadn’t planned on it,” he replies, settling back and staring up at the ceiling. Rey remembers the extent of the wounds and the pain he’s probably in and, while he deserves it, she softens enough to bite back her reply. Slinging her staff over her shoulder and the blaster in her belt, with the materials for her saber wrapped carefully in a canvas sheet inside her satchel, she heads out the door.

“I’ll be back at sundown, probably, try not to die while I’m gone.” She doesn’t wait for a response.

Outside, she closes her eyes and reaches out, feeling for the Force, the way that it ebbs and flows, the weak current of it on the barren desert planet. After a moment she finds the direction it’s weakest and starts her sand speeder. She keeps going until she can feel almost nothing, an area practically dead to the Force, and she picks a spot in the shade, sits down, spreads out the canvas over the sand, taking out her lightsaber components and arranging them out in front of her.

With a deep breath she starts meditating, reaching for the force in herself and in the crystal sitting on the sheet in front of her. She thinks about the weapon it’ll create and focuses on the image in her mind, a thin handle and a graceful blue blade. For hours she sits there, but there’s… a disconnect between her and the ‘saber and the Force, something that just doesn’t  _ click _ . Luke said it should be simple but it’s just… not working.

When the twin suns start to dip towards the horizon she growls in frustration and carefully gathers her lightsaber components, putting them back into her bag and trying to rein in her feelings as she makes her way back to Obi-Wan’s hut. Ren is asleep when she gets back, so she tries to be quiet as she bustles around getting things to cook for dinner.

“I know why you saved me,” he says suddenly, making her jump. He continues before she can respond. “You want to prove that I can’t tempt you towards the dark side.”

She snorts. “You really weren’t in a position to do much tempting when I found you half-dead and unconscious in a cave.”

“But you were tempted to kill me in cold blood, which would have been dark. Leaving me there to die would have been less evil, but still not good. Taking me and healing me and looking after me? That’s very light of you.” She’s staring at him, trying to puzzle him out, and he looks back at her with the same intensity. “You showed me mercy. Compassion, I might even say.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she snaps.

“If you were going to kill me, you would have done it by now,” he replies flippantly. “You wouldn’t have wasted supplies on someone you’re not going to let live. Were you planning on getting me back to fighting shape so I could be your first victory with your new lightsaber? That is why you’re here, isn’t it? Skywalker has you building your lightsaber.” She doesn’t say anything, so he keeps going. “My only question is why you’re still here- if I were you I would have assumed it was a trap and gotten off-planet as fast as possible.”

She’d considered it, when she’d found him- but even if the First Order had known she would take him with her and heal him, it’s just not his style. Ren doesn’t do underhanded- he’s too insecure in his power, to desperate to prove it at any opportunity. He’s overt and he’s conspicuous, not sneaky or tricky. “It would be a really ill-thought out trap,” she finally says in reply. “Not even you had any way of knowing I wouldn’t just kill you and leave you for the womp rats.”

“That’s true,” he replies, “but how do you know I’m not going to call them and bring them down on you now, or later when I’m healed?”

Honestly, she’s wondering why he hasn’t done it yet- if he even can. There’s something very off about all of this, about the fact that he’s here without any backup or anything, but she finally goes with, “I’m offering you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Is that wise?” he asks, snide. “I  _ am _ your nemesis.”

“If you keep talking you won’t eat,” she replies, glaring at him with all the hate she can muster for someone who probably can’t even stand on their own two feet. He’s so pathetic she can’t even manage to feel proper enmity towards him. It’s sad.

For the rest of the night he’s silent, only speaking to thank her when she hands him a plate of rations. Out of habit, she licks her plate after eating, because she’s still hungry since she had to split rations, and he just stares at her in amused bewilderment. She scowls back.

That night she sleeps in the corner again, and the next morning she wakes up to Ren trying to stand up, his face contorted in pain and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

“Don’t do that!” she reprimands immediately, jumping to her feet. “You’re still injured, you’ll make it worse. You need to rest.”

He snorts. “Don’t act as if you’re not desperate to have me out of your hair, scavenger,” he says through teeth gritted in agony. She just rolls her eyes and pushes him back down gently.

“Stay here and don’t break yourself and don’t die while I’m gone, okay?” she says a few minutes later, walking out the door. 

Rey goes to a different spot today, travelling further and finding someplace even more Force-null. Maybe that was the problem, yesterday- the point of meditation is to focus on yourself and the saber, and being someplace weak in the Force makes it easier to ignore interference. But still she doesn’t quite get it, the feeling Luke described, the connection with her crystal and her saber, evading her like a word on the tip of her tongue. She can disassemble and reassemble the individual components by hand, no problem, can even do it with the Force, though it’s slightly more difficult, but when she clicks the ignition, nothing happens. At sunset she goes back, irritated, trying to ignore the worry gnawing at her- what if she can’t build the saber because she’s not meant to be a Jedi? She pushes the thought aside.

“You don’t like me much, do you?” Ren asks that night, sitting up and watching her cook, carefully so that she’s not wasting anything.

“Why would I?” she replies evenly, furrowing her brow at the pot on the stove.

“Isn’t that the Jedi way, though? Loving the whole universe unconditionally?” His mocking tone sounds hollow, his scorn halfhearted.

Rey sighs. “I don’t hate you anymore, if that’s what you’re asking. Watching you be injured and helpless and pathetic took away everything scary about you, and now you’re just a spoiled, bitter, heartless bastard who destroyed everything he had for no reason.”

He tenses, glaring daggers at the floor. “You don’t understand,” he says, quietly, halfway between a sigh and a snarl.

“No,” she replies shortly, turning to look at him, “I don’t. I don’t understand for one  _ fucking _ second how someone with a  _ family _ that  _ loves _ him and all the opportunity in the world and everything anyone could possibly want could just… throw all that away! Do you have any idea what I would give to have just- to have a  _ fraction _ of what you had, a  _ moment _ of that kind of happiness?” By the time she finishes, she’s practically shouting, pointing her spoon at him, accusatory.

“I know,” he says, slouched over with his head in his hands, sounding so small and broken. “It was all… it was such a mistake.”

“You’re  _ damn _ right,” she growls, stabbing at the contents of the pot.

“I’m… I can’t ever make it better, but I’m trying, okay? I’m trying.” It’s such a strange, vulnerable thing for him to say, she just has to look at him sidelong for a while. Atonement isn’t the way of the dark side. Seeking redemption isn’t the way of the dark side. She’s not sure what’s going on here, but there’s definitely something she’s missing if Kylo Ren, destroyer of the New Jedi Order, is alone and injured and trying to right wrongs on an outer-rim backwater hellhole.

“Luke always says no one is beyond forgiveness,” she offers, finally, quietly. He seems to slump further into himself and it breaks her heart a little bit to see him, once so intimidating and powerful, reduced to this. She gets the feeling that even if she did attack him, he wouldn’t fight back.

“Family isn’t just about blood, you know,” he says, much later, after she’s curled up in the corner ready to sleep. “From what I see you’ve made a… fair one of your own with the pilot and the trai- um, I mean.” He cuts himself off, sounding embarrassed. It takes her by surprise, and she finds herself smiling into the darkness.

“Finn,” she says. “His name’s Finn.”

“Finn,” he repeats, carefully, almost inaudibly, as if he’s not sure he has the right to say it.

In the morning, Ren is standing, walking carefully and leaning heavily on the wall. He grins at her surprised look. “I’ll be gone before you know it,” he says, sounding only mildly pained.

“Good,” she replies woodenly. She’s not sure if she means it.

It’s another day of nothing as she meditates over the lightsaber, and the fear of failure has overtaken the frustration by the time the sun goes down. She cuts it a little bit too close to dark for her comfort, speeding the last few kilometers after the second sun has disappeared, and when she walks in she’s frozen in surprise for a moment- because Ren’s not only standing, he’s  _ cooking _ , or at least trying to. It doesn’t look like it’s going very well.

“Do you need help?” she asks, amused at his consternation.

“No!” he snaps. “I can do this myself.” She bites back a smile and puts away her bag, sitting on the bed and waiting for him to either finish or give up and ask for help. The former comes first, and when he thrusts her plate at her the rations are a little bit charred and slightly suspicious looking, but she had to eat leather for about a week when she was thirteen, so she can handle it.

“Thank you,” she says afterwards. “That was very kind of you.”

He rolls his eyes, but she can see the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “You’re having trouble with your lightsaber,” he says after a pause, “aren’t you?”

She sighs, but doesn’t say anything.

“Can I see your components?” he asks, looking askance at her, almost shy. She empties the bag on the floor in front of where he’s sitting and he starts to sift through the parts. “You’re making a single-emitter sword?”

“With a blue kyber crystal from the caves on Lothal,” she confirms, nodding down at the part.

“But you’re not a swordfighter,” he replies with a confused frown.

“What?”

“On Starkiller- you didn’t fight like someone who uses a sword,” he explains. “You were too awkward with it, and you kept trying to stab me. You don’t stab with a lightsaber.”

“I know that,” she huffs, scowling. “I can fight with a sword.”

“But it’s not  _ your _ weapon,” he says, raising his eyebrows. He sounds almost teacherly, like Luke does when he’s trying to guide her towards an answer he thinks she already knows.

“I grew up fighting with a quarterstaff,” she admits.

“Then your lightsaber should be a quarterstaff as well,” Ren says, wrapping up the components and sitting back. “The only reason the old Jedi all used single-blade sabers was because that was what they’d trained with all their lives, so it was what they knew best by default. Skywalker’s the same, he’s only ever fought with blasters and gunships and swords, so of course he’d use a single-emitter blade as well. And my old saber wasn’t so different from the ones I’d trained with as a Padawan, it just added a crossguard, the technique was still mostly the same.” He gestures at her. “You grew up with a quarterstaff, it’s your natural weapon, trying to make you leave it behind is counterproductive. You  _ can _ fight with a sword, and probably very well, but you’ll always prefer a staff- just because you program six million forms of communication into an astromech doesn’t make it a protocol droid.”

She takes a moment to think over it. “Luke never said I could make a staff.”

“It probably just never occurred to him, he’s not trying to stifle you like the old Jedi would have.” Ren shakes his head. “They were so afraid of change, diversity. One type of lightsaber. One ideology. One way of life. No variation. That was their undoing.”

“Darth Vader was their undoing,” Rey protests.

“Only because the Jedi code was so unyielding.” Ren huffs. “The Order was too rigid, contracted to a corrupt Republic, straying from their own ideals in the name of a false galactic peace. Even if Vader hadn’t ended it, it would have imploded on its own.”

“Luke’s not like that,” Rey insists, defensive. “He knows better.” Ren just stares at the rolled-up canvas full of lightsaber parts and doesn’t say anything.

She’s almost giddy with excitement the next morning, blueprints and ideas running through her head. She brought plenty of extra parts with her, of course, so she sits outside where the light is good with all her bits and pieces and it’s not long at all before she loses herself in the rhythm of creation, breaking down her quarterstaff for parts and building a new saber, one with emitters on either end, long and powerful and comfortable in her hand when she puts it all together. Experimentally, she closes her eyes and reaches for the Force, and it’s as if her weapon was just waiting for her to figure it out, because she feels the connection almost instantly, and when she opens her eyes and holds out her hand, the pieces practically jump together on their own. It’s simple and effortless, and when a press of the ignition sends twin blue beams shooting out of either end, she can’t hold back her shriek of delight.

“Are you okay?” Ren asks, standing in the doorway a moment later. “I heard a scream.”

“Look!” she exclaims, ecstatic. “It worked!” She ignites the saber and twirls it experimentally, grinning and thrilled. He smiles back at her and she extinguishes the saber, throwing her arms around his neck. He almost falls backwards in surprise. “Thank you,” she says, hugging him briefly before stepping back. His face is almost shell-shocked, staring at her with undisguised bafflement. She slips past him, into the hut, and places her new saber next to her bag before digging out another pack of her dwindling rations.

“I suppose it’s time for our fight, then?” he says when he comes back a moment later, and she stares at him for a long second before discerning that she’s not just hearing things and he actually  _ is _ teasing her.

She smiles. “It wouldn’t really be fair, would it? You don’t have a weapon.”

“Another time,” he says with a dismissive wave, but she can tell he doesn’t mean it. “So you’re going back, then?” he asks, leaning against the wall. He’s recovered remarkably well, though she can still see a lot of stiffness and pain in the way he moves.

“Tomorrow,” she replies. “Should I take you somewhere? Mos Eisley?” There’s a beat of silence before she realizes that was probably weird, at best. Even if they haven’t killed each other, they’re not friends, but it feels weird to try and think of him like an opponent now, after everything, to be suspicious of him.

“Mos Eisley would be good,” he replies. A moment later, “Thank you. I don’t know if I’ve said that already but- thank you. For saving me. You didn’t have to do that.”

“It was the right choice,” she replies softly. “Besides, now you owe me, so that’ll be good to have for the next time we’re, you know, enemies.”

He stares at the floor and doesn’t say anything and she wonders if he feels the same discomfort at the word she does- alone in the desert for three days, they stopped feeling like opposite sides of a war. It wasn’t the light and the dark, it was just the two of them, coexisting, getting along. Somewhere in the quiet of her heart, she hopes they never have to be enemies again, because it was so nice to just… be at peace.

They don’t say anything for the rest of the night, and they leave the next morning for Mos Eisley. As they part ways, he looks at her for a moment as if he wants to tell her something, but settles for a nod of farewell before he disappears into the crowd.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


End file.
